Tag Archives: Arab Spring

Former President Ronald Reagan famously quipped, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” The wisdom of his words has been proved over and over again domestically as we have seen government agencies turn small problems into big ones and create catastrophes where there were none previously, all at taxpayer expense, of course. Not content with domestic bumbling, our leaders are turning their attention to fixing the world and especially the Middle East…(God help us!!)

The Obama administration is delighted with the progress of “democracy” in Egypt and is intent on encouraging the process. The fact that the two major Egyptian Islamist parties have captured 62% of the latest voting doesn’t seem to worry the optimists in Washington. Didn’t you know that the Muslim Brotherhood is now a kinder, more gentle, moderate organization (secular, too!) Funny thing is that the so-called “moderate organization” has never repudiated its founding charter which says, “Allah is our objective, the Koran is our Constitution, the Prophet is our leader, jihad is our way, and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations.” These are reasonable, tolerant folks with whom US negotiators can certainly hammer out a just and lasting peace in the Middle East and beyond. As I reported last week,

Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi

“The Obama administration has turned to Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s leading jurist, to mediate secret negotiations between the United States and the Taliban.” This is largely “untapped talent” that the US government can utilize to fix the world!

There does seem to be one glitch in this utopian vision – and that is Israel. Those stubborn Jews just don’t seem to be willing to commit national suicide, and that’s a real problem. President Obama in May, 2011, called for Israel to undertake a “full and phased withdrawal of Israeli forces” from “occupied Palestinian lands” to what he termed “borders based on 1967 lines” – the 1949 armistice lines. Israel’s former Foreign Minister and UN ambassador Abba Eban, in 1967, referred to those lines as the “Auschwitz borders.” The country would, at its most populous places, be only nine miles wide. In making this supposedly helpful demand, the President failed to honor U.S. commitments made to Israel by George W. Bush in 2004, commitments which were overwhelmingly supported by both Houses of Congress.

But Bush was an “evil war-monger” and the current resident of the White House is intent on resetting the parameters of our relationship with the Muslim world (can you say dhimmitude?). Therefore we must overlook small foibles of the Palestinians – like the refusal of Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, their glorification of murderous terrorists as national heroes, their attempted unity deal with Hamas, etc. And, in order to fix the Middle East, we must force Israel to sit down at the negotiating table with a bunch of savages who want to wipe them out and sign a “peace agreement” which won’t be worth the paper on which it’s written.

Speaking of peace agreements, the new Egyptian government has threatened to cancel the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty of March 26, 1979. This was a land for peace deal in which Israel gave up the Sinai in exchange for peace, albeit a cold peace at best, with Egypt. Caroline Glick, in her latest blog, The Land-For-Peace Hoax, asks the question,“will the US act in accordance with its role as guarantor of the peace and demand that the new Egyptian government give Sinai back to Israel?… if the Obama administration or whatever administration is in power when Egypt abrogates the treaty does not issue such a demand, and stand behind it, and if the EU does not support the demand, the entire concept of land-for-peace will be exposed as a hoax.”

Of course it’s a hoax; it was never intended to be anything else. And the chances of real concrete assistance from the US and the rest of the Western world as suggested in Ms. Glick’s article, are pretty remote. If current attitudes toward us don’t change, when we in Israel hear the words, “We’re from the United States government and we’re here to help!” we’d be wise to run in the other direction as fast as we can go!

Whew! We made it through 2011…perhaps just by the skin of our teeth. As we enter the new year let’s pause for a moment to reflect on the current “state of the world.” Since I’m not a prophet I won’t make any prognostications about what will happen in 2012. Those gloom and doom pronouncements are floating around all over the internet (usually with an agenda of some sort – sell products, solicit donations, attract devotees to some individual or group); it doesn’t pay to unduly focus on them or have a panic attack and go hide in a cave somewhere with ten years’ worth of food. Where to focus? I’ll tell you at the end of this article. Meanwhile, where are we at right now?

• The United States is now 15 trillion dollars in debt with 4.5 trillion added in just the last 3 years by a President and congress who love to spend other people’s money.

• Homegrown terrorism in the United States is growing. A Pew Poll of US Muslims has indicated some disturbing trends. Among native-born African-American Muslims, 11% have a favorable opinion of al-Qaeda, 16% say that attacking civilians can be religiously justified at least sometimes and 40% support extremism. In another study by Mordechai Kedar and David Yerushalmi, only 19% of United States’ mosques do not teach jihad violence and/or Islamic supremacism.

The Arab Spring has produced the very opposite of the “freedom” that media and government “talking heads” were promising, with Islamic pro-Shariah regimes coming into power.

• Iran has been flexing its muscles as it tested its first domestically produced nuclear fuel rod and tested a new medium-range surface-to-air missile, all in its race toward the goal of producing a nuclear weapon.

• A shocking article by Andrew McCarthy in Family Security Matters revealed that “that the Obama administration has turned to Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood’sleading jurist, to mediate secret negotiations between the United States and the Taliban.”

Sheikh Yusuf-al-Qaradawi

I have written about al-Qaradawi before. He is, without exaggeration, evil incarnate! “Qaradawi urges that Islam must dominate the world, under a global caliphate governed by sharia.” His view of the Jews, not just Israel or “settlers”, is straight out of classic Islamic writings:

This is what is told in the Hadith of Ibn-Omar and the Hadith of Abu-Hurairah: “You shall continue to fight the Jews and they will fight you, until the Muslims will kill them. And the Jew will hide behind the stone and the tree, and the stone and the tree will say: ‘Oh servant of Allah, Oh Muslim, this is a Jew behind me. Come and kill him!’ The resurrection will not come before this happens.” This is a text from the good omens in which we believe.

Al-Qaradawi believes this? Some impartial mediator! What could the administration possibly hope to gain by the intervention of a barbaric monster who is still living in the seventh century? The scary thought is – perhaps their intent isn’t to advance American interests. America is the “great Satan,” you know.

• Finally, here in Israel, PA leader Mahmoud Abbas is still working on unity talks with Hamas and other Palestinian factions. Why bother to come to the negotiating table with “evil Israel” when you can come to the negotiating table with a “terrorist organization.” On top of that, Abbas has just appointedGeneral Mahmoud Damra to the post of special presidential advisor for district affairs. Damra has the dubious distinction of being one of the 1,027 terrorists released as part of the Gilad Schalit exchange. He was directly involved in several attacks that claimed Israeli lives.

OK already, the state of the world is bleak, and 2012 won’t be a year for the faint-hearted. But, as I said earlier, to focus on the craziness will do nothing but make us crazy or depressed. Where to focus? On the One who is ultimately in charge of everything. His solution to the world’s dilemma is much too simple for most people to grasp but it’s guaranteed to work, whether on an individual or national level…and here it is…

If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.
2Chronicles 7:14